As is well known, many decorators, especially amateur or nonprofessional decorators, tend not to pay sufficient attention to the care and preservation of their paint brushes following completion of a painting job and/or during intervals ranging perhaps from a few hours to one or more weeks between decorating sessions. Typically, amateur decorators tend, during such intervals, to leave their brushes soaking in white spirit with the result that the brushes dip into a slurry consisting of paint and white spirit and are in an unsatisfactory condition when painting is resumed. The bristles of such brushes then tend irreversibly to loose their pliability and/or their shape and hence have to be discharged and replaced long before such replacement should be necessary owing to fair wear and tear. Even professional decorators frequently merely leave their brushes soaking in a bucket of water over-night and such treatment tends to damage the brushes if not through hardening then at least through deformation.